Red-Veined Darter Dragonfly

It’s a glorious day here in Italy. I’ve climbed to the top of a hill and can see across the valley:

There’s the rattle of a dragonfly nearby:

It’s a Red-Veined Darter, Sympetrum fonscolombii. It’s an incredible organism. People have tri-chromatic vision, which means we see colours in red, blue and green. I can see that this dragonfly is red, blue and green.

Dragonflies, however, have the most incredible colour vision. A study in Japan showed they all have at least 11 different light-sensitive proteins called Opsins. Some even have 30 different ones. They are likely to be able to see in the ultra-violet section of the spectrum as well as seeing polarised light.

I hope it can see just how stormy it looks.

What a bizarre living world we have, where dragonflies have evolved over the past 325 million years to have over 3000 species.

David @ the HALL of EINAR on SkylarkingBritish breeding Skylarks don’t migrate Russell. Their population has declined because of our changing agricultural practice. There are currently about 1.5 million Skylark territories in the UK. There used to be 3.75 million territories. We...

Pat Nelson on Don’t bark at me, deerI saw one of these in Germany MANY years ago and the bark took me by surprise. Our white-tailed deer in New England have no such vocalization. It was fun to see your story and...

Russell Emm on SkylarkingWhy don’t you lobby Europe on the thousands that are shot migrating to the UK, surely that has a huge impact on numbers